Biomedical research areas including the study of metagenomics, inflammation and pathogenesis are resource and technology intense. All COBRE-supported investigators require state of-the-art resources to successfully compete with investigators from other resource-rich institutions for NIH support. The primary goal of the Functional Microbiomics Core (FMC) is to establish an integrated service center that functions as a critical resource for all Microbiome, Inflammation and Pathogenicity COBRE investigators. Since all the COBRE projects utilize mouse models to explore the inter-relationships between inflammation and pathogenesis, and the contribution of microbiota to this process, the development of a facility to house and maintain germ-free and gnotobiotic mice is crucial to the FMC. An anaerobic culture facility will support research on gnotobiotic mice that requires specific colonization with fecal transplants or defined anaerobic bacteria. Further, in Aim 2, we propose to establish an integrated metagenomics center for microbiota. This facility will prepare genomic DNA following unified protocols and generate 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences, and provide bioinformatics support for all microbiota analysis. The FMC will also support all COBRE projects with analysis of their biological samples for inflammatory markers as well as histopathological examination of tissue sections. Education and training of junior investigators and the university wide research community in microbiota research is an important goal of the FMC. Towards this goal, the FMC will organize seminars as well as informal meetings that will serve as a forum for highlighting the scientific and technical advances in the field. Finally, the FMC plans to become an independent service center at UofL to support the needs of all researchers in this area of research